My topic for the upcoming research paper is on the
psychology of advertising to children, and how this leads to materialism. The
probable research question is: what are the current advertising strategies and
methods that marketers use to target pre-teens? The link to popular culture
regards how the modern strategies of marketing to children are accepted without
question by mainstream society. Marketing is pop culture in itself because it
represents the current trends—what is propagated by advertisers. Habitually
shown, it becomes a process of brainwash: “I must have this,” “I must be this,”
etc.
What I know (so far) on this subject is from a great
documentary called Consuming Kids.
Basically, the overall idea of the film highlights how children are being
influenced (nowadays more than ever) to consume. The film supports this
assertion by showing and discussing all the different ways children are being
manipulated with detrimental marketing tactics and how advertisers employ child
psychologists’ to research children’s behavior, and video graph children around
the clock etc.
How would I respond to answering my research question right
now? I would simply state: marketing to preteens has become more pervasive and
sophisticated. Additionally, even defining this demographic market is
difficult. What I still need to do is research more. Such as, why are these
advertising methods harmful? Why should society care? How will this affect
future generations? What are the differences with past marketing strategies
versus current tactics? Why has this come to be? Is it because of deregulation and/or
shifting cultural values? Why do advertisers have more leeway today? What can
be done to change this? What are the solutions? And many more questions can be constructed.
